Born in Indiana in 1884, Sidney Clio Fulkerson was the last child of Amos and Rebecca Fulkerson. In the 1900 census, Martha Rebecca, John William, and Sidney Clio were living at home with their parents in Cicero,Ind., Martha Rebecca was a schoolteacher, following in the footsteps of her father. John William was a marshall, and Sidney Clio, then 16, was attending school. He later went to work for a local glass factory. Glass-making was the predominant industry of that area and in fact is still the principal industry of Dunkirk, Indiana, where the Fulkersons had settled in 1848. While a young man in Cicero, Sidney Clio Fulkerson played first base for a minor league professional baseball team, probably associated with the glass factory. The team wore uniforms with the letter "C" on armbands.

In 1910, the Cicero company agreed to open a new factory on North Camp Avenue in Olney, Illinois. In March of that year, factory management in Cicero moved 60 glassblowers, including Sidney Clio Fulkerson, age 26, to Olney. Many of the townspeople turned their homes into boarding houses and welcomed the new arrivals. Sidney Clio and another glassblower rented a room in the home of Henry Taylor and his wife, Alice Levering Taylor. The Taylors' 18­year-old daughter, Tress (Frances Theresa), her sister, Alice Floy, and young brother, Levering, had to rise at 5 a.m. every day to start making pies for the boarders who had ravenous appetites. Frances Theresa Taylor at 19 was a strikingly beautiful young woman. And Sidney Clio Fulkerson was handsome, over six feet tall and wiry, and had deep grey eyes.

The Taylor family was quite musical, especially Alice Floy who was a concert pianist. Sidney Clio enjoyed buying sheet music for her. Tress was a talented singer and used to sing solos in public, including at funerals. Sidney  Clio hadn't lived in the Taylor home long before he began courting Tress Taylor. They dated by horse and buggy.